


A Different Kind of Hero

by Eridell



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: All the Clint tags, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Feels, Coulson and Clint and their baby birds, Cute Kids, Deaf Clint, Fluff, Gen, Insecure Clint, Kid feels, LiveJournal Prompt, Nesting Clint Barton, OTP Feels, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Parent Nick Fury, Platonic Relationships, Prompt Fill, Sassy Steve Rogers, Tony Being Tony, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridell/pseuds/Eridell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers spend a day at a local childrens' hospital getting to know their younger fans. One agent has trouble connecting because of a barrier that prevents him from speaking normally... but Clint Barton has always been known to be resourceful.</p><p>From an avengerkink Livejournal prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We interrupt your regularly scheduled Kaiju Bros feels for a little Avenger cuteness. I saw this prompt at the end of the Avengerkink round 20 and immediately knew I had to write it. The OP asked for gen or X/Clint, so I’m going with some down-key SHIELD Husbands (my OTP fo rizzle) on this one and I’m super super super sorry if the pairing isn’t what they wanted. D: Coulson and Clint are gonna be more on the platonic side for this one just to be safe. Anyway, hope you like! And a big thank you to Sammy for sitting on Skype and giving me feedback and help when I got stumped on a detail. <3
> 
>  **UPDATE - January 3, 2014**  
>  Ugh, I am SO sorry this fic hasn't been updated yet. I got caught up with a few collab projects and a couple RP groups and this fic kinda fell through the cracks. The first draft of chapter two is currently in the works, and it'll be up as soon as my fingers will let me type it all out. Again, I'm really sorry for the delay!

The Avengers and kids tended to be a combination you only spoke of when talking about things that should never, ever happen. A team of wild, reckless, borderline unstable superheroes in a 200-year-old building full of sick and injured children? Yeah, definitely not the first on the list of “sane, safe ideas”. So how the hell SHIELD got pushed into loaning the team out for a charity day at the St. Catherine’s Hospital for Children was anyone’s guess. Something about a Stark Industries fiasco and financial investors dropping like flies. How ironic.

Bruce had opted out of the event for rather glaringly obvious reasons, and it didn’t take much convincing to make Fury sign off on his absent from duty waiver. The rest of the team seemed to find their niche within the large ballroom of children rather quickly. Tony, in his typical all-about-me style, brought along his suitcase suit and started off the day with a flashy demonstration that included flying over the crowd’s head with three of the rugrats on his back. Never to be outdone by a show of metal and bravado Steve took to his Captain voice rather quickly, and after forcing Tony back to the ground before some of the nurses had a conniption took to a small corner with a rapt group to discuss the importance of growing up with a sense of personal responsibility. What a buzzkill. At least the kids seemed to enjoy it. Or maybe they were just pulling a Coulson and the wide-eyed looks of total adoration were aimed more at his shield than his morally razor-straight words.

It took a while for Natasha to find her spot within the throng, but after running across a Ukrainian girl and her blind brother who were playing in a corner by themselves she quickly worked her way into their little game with a few familiar words. Before long she was rolling across the floor, a Lego pistol leveled at their heads before the girl fired off a loud “KA-PEW!” from her own that sent the Black Widow flying backward with a dramtic cry of defeat and a Slavic promise of vengeance.

Thor didn’t even have to try. The kids seemed to flock to him faster than even Steve: within five minutes of the nurses allowing the kids to run free nearly a third of them gathered around him, pawing at his armor and tugging at his cape with a myriad of questions about Asgard and his “magic hammer”. A doctor quickly eschewed the idea of him summoning it in the ballroom, citing a very real need to keep lightning away from walls that were two centuries old and successfully quashing the idea, much to Thor’s obvious dismay. He still managed to hold their attention even without Mjolnir, squeals of excitement echoing from his part of the room as he rose to his feet with his arms extended and five children clinging to each like wriggling little vines when their feet left the ground.

Even Fury managed to find a few of the crowd that he clicked with. Three of the older kids found themselves planted at his feet, listening with intense focus as he rattled off stories from his Ranger days and cackled at their clear disbelief when he explained how he’d survived even the toughest and most dangerous recons.

The only one that seemed to have trouble was Barton. Phil’s eyes swept the room every now and then in search of fires, doing a quick headcount every now and then while muttering through a polite conversation with the oldest nurse, a sweet little old lady whose white habit barely reached his chest. Every time his eyes found Barton he was pretty much in the same place: either hovering near Natasha or Fury with a look of obvious discomfort. He didn’t bother to speak, fingers coming up to fiddle with the clear tubing on his ears every now and then when one of the youngsters tried to talk to him. He was out of his element, and Phil knew enough about his asset to know that that was his greatest fear. Barton was always in control, and when he wasn’t it usually meant he’d been compromised.

In layman’s terms, Clint couldn’t talk to the kids like the others. No one understood him.

They were halfway through the three-hour event when Phil’s eyes swept the room again, coming across a rather tired Romanoff slumped against the wall with the Ukrainian kids leaned into her sides and a book splayed across her lap. But it wasn’t the agent his eyes spotted: it was two small devices laying on the window sill just beside her head, clear tubes catching the light from the setting sun just beyond the window. He excused himself politely from the old nun’s company and quickly stepped across the massive room, dodging bouncy balls that Steve was lobbing off his shield with a quick duck of his head before sliding to kneel next to Natasha with the hearing devices clutched in his palm.

"Where is Agent Barton?"

Natasha glanced up, pausing in her story to shrug passively and answer back in perfect English. “He said he was gonna go find a quiet place,” she replied. “I think he found a kid that had the same kind of hearing aids he does and gave her the batteries out of his.”

Oh.

Sure enough, when Phil flicked open the small battery compartment on one of the devices, the space where the small, round discs should have been were empty. So now not only did he have to worry about one of his agents being gone, he also had the extra weight of him being without his hearing aids and possibly with another deaf child. Anyone else would have lost their head on the spot.

But not Phil. He knew Clint. Phil knew how he got when he was stressed or overloaded, and if he’d finally found a kindred little spirit or two he was gonna seize the opportunity to get away from the loud, busy hall to talk with them somewhere quieter. And if memory served correctly there was an access hall directly behind their room.

It didn’t take Phil long to find him. If the muffled giggles and shifts of feet across the tile floor weren’t enough of an indication as to Hawkeye and his little birds’ impromptu hiding place, the giant pile of stacked up boxes against the door of the loading dock was.

There were no words coming from the little fort, of course. The shifting and quiet clapping of fingers, the occasional whimper of a sounded out word and a wave of giggles during a pause reached his ears, but otherwise the fort was silent as a church. Phil padded toward it hesitantly, waiting just on the other side of the tallest wall for a moment before peering around.

Seven kids were grouped around Clint in a tight group, pillows and stuffed animals clutched to their chests as he sat at the head with rapidly flying fingers telling some unheard story. But it wasn’t his hands that Phil noticed. It was his smile. His mouth moved along with his hands, telling the story of how he and the “quiet man in the suit talking to Sister Grace” had met. He was enthusiastic in his near silent regaling, fingers moving almost too quick to catch the words he was signing. He was so into the story that he didn’t notice that the man he was speaking about was hovering at the wall of the fort, blinking up as one of the kids waved to him and pointed at Phil.

"Hey, you said no normal people!" one signed out.

"Yeah, this is supposed to be a secret club for people that talk like us!" another gestured angrily, his tiny fingers almost a blur.

"Only people that speak our language!" yet another chimed in.

Phil paused with his eyes locked onto the archer’s, a soft smile playing on the corners of his lips as he watched Clint shift uncomfortably on the spot. He obviously didn’t know what to do. Or maybe he was embarrassed that Phil had caught (what he presumed to be just mouthed words) the story of how they had met. Phil’s hands raised up above the edge of the cardboard wall to ask aloud “May I come in?” as his fingers gesticulated out the words.

Clint’s look was absolutely priceless. His jaw nearly fell straight off his face, eyes widening to the size of a deer in the path of a speeding Chevy as he looked back to the small gaggle of baby birds sitting in front of him in their impromptu nest. A few of them nodded eagerly and waved him in, one of them standing to tug him by the hand around the opening of the wall. He plopped down next to Clint, legs folding indian-style under him as one of the kids immediately barraged him with eager questions. He took them in stride and signed back with perfect fluidity, Clint eventually joining in until the two were holding court together with some story about them in Bangladesh a few months ago that had ended with half a street blowing up.

They sat there the rest of the event, joking and telling stories with the kids who clung to their every word like they were speaking straight from the Messiah. Phil made no mention of when Clint’s knee scooted sideways to touch his own, fingers never pausing in their story even as his eyes briefly glanced down to where they were touching with a faint smile on his lips. Clint needed this. He needed to find his own kind, to feel a familiar presence and ground himself when the others were being their typical, flashy selves and taking all the attention. Clint might not be a super-serum powerhouse, or a super rich genius, or some kind of weird god from an alternate reality, but that didn’t make him any less of a hero to these kids. If anything his handicap, and the admission and utilization of it, made him the greatest hero of all.

Even without a single spoken word, the wide-eyed grin on each kid’s face was more than enough to tell that Clint Barton was their greatest hero.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony still professes his dislike of small kids, even when Steve reminds him that he took his helmet off and put it on one so he could talk to JARVIS. Tasha finds intense amusement in Thor's eagerness and Fury's predictability, and a deaf Hawk finally finds his place on a team of overpowered superheroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH. This took forever. I'm so sorry. Other projects are eating my brain, and Animals is so backed up I don't know what to do with it right now. But I'm drowning in Pheels right now and this fic's been on the back burner for far too long. This fic is unbeta'd right now, so I apologize in advance for any typos I missed.
> 
> A big thank-you to everyone who's left comments and kudos so far, and for those of you who've pestered me for the second chapter thank you for kicking my butt into gear and getting me to FINALLY update this thing.

"I still don't like kids."

No matter how many times he said it, and no matter how stoic he tried to keep his face, there was no fooling the people around him. Steve seemed most attuned to his rather obvious lie, prodding the smaller man in the ribs with that good-natured smile of his that made it damn near impossible to lie to him. "Aw, come on," he chided gently. "I saw that grin when you plopped your helmet on that little boy's head."

"Did you tell JARVIS to ham it up, or did he do that all on his own?" Natasha sprang into the conversation without warning as she entered the small living room they were all grouped in, fresh out of her tac-suit and dressed in a SHIELD sweatshirt and a pair of shorts as she flopped down on the empty side of the sofa that Tony wasn't occupying.

He merely snorted in response, kicking his shoes up onto the coffee table with a shake of his head. "Whatever JARVIS told him to make him squeal that loud was all on him." The purposeful stone-set look on his face was already beginning to crack as he spoke, the others' jabbing working away his resolve slowly until he admitted to the fact that yes, that hadn't been quite as painful as it could have been. That kind of comment was tantamount to an admission of being wrong, and the others knew to take what they could get when it came to Tony being any kind of amicable to things he doesn't want to do.

The only one that was missing from the room was Clint, who had stuck around for all of two minutes when they got back to Stark Tower before ducking off with a faint nod to his handler. Phil didn't need an outward explanation to know where Clint was heading: whenever they got back from any kind of public anything, Clint tended to decompress on his own in a quiet place rather than hang around and converse with the team. Only Thor had looked any kind of put out, claiming that he had "hardly seen beak nor feather of his Hawk friend and wished to share the joy of such a fulfilling venture with all of his companions".

That was a direct quote, and had nearly been Stark's undoing when he heard it. It took him a solid five minutes to stop choking around the word "beak" alone.

Phil perched himself on the arm of an unoccupied chair off to the side of the cluster of furniture, quietly listening and chiming in whenever pertinent. His day had been considerably less rowdy than the others, and given the fact that the situation he'd ended up in at the hospital hadn't been his own it wasn't his place to give the details. Natasha was the only one that knew, and go figure she hadn't needed a word of explanation to figure it out. She was terrifyingly perceptive when it came to Clint, and leaving his hearing aids with her had been the only indication she'd needed to put two and two together.

"What about you, Agent?" Tony's drawl cut through the momentary haze of unfocus Phil found himself in during a lull of the conversation, a dark brow cocked toward his hairline as he propped his chin into the heel of his hand and braced his elbow into the arm of the sofa. "You were gone for the last hour. That nun was seriously beginning to worry about you. I think you might have found a new fan."

Phil merely rolled his eyes. "There's a difference between being a 'fan' and being a genuinely nice person who likes to engage in meaningful conversation," he shot back, an edge of amusement curling into his words as he leaned back against the high back of his armchair.

"Uh huh." The flat tone of his response signaled Tony had something sarcastic brewing in his head, and Phil mentally braced himself against the steel-melting look the other had him fixed with. "You're telling me you blew off a sweet little ol' lady to go hide in a dark hall with Barton? Good Lord, Coulson. That's dark. I didn't think you had it in you."

Much to everyone's surprise Steve was the one who cut in, Phil's mouth opened and poised to spit out some kind of witty comeback before the Captain waved a hand to step into the conversation. "From what the nurses said, Clint found out about the deaf children who were too noise-sensitive to enter the hall and asked to bring them out of their ward so they could do _something_."

Tony looked toward him with a more than surprised look, both brows raised now as his lips curled into a plaintive frown and he nodded in response. "Makes sense, I guess," he replied, sarcasm dropping from his tone the second he began talking again. "Dude looked like he was gonna crawl up a wall and hide in the ceiling for a bit. Good to know he found something to do."

For all his faults and quirks, Tony Stark seemed to understand when something wasn't worth joking about. And even if it was in a strange, roundabout way, he was good at lettings go when he got the final word.

Thor launched into another story about one of the kids, a sweet little girl who'd been fighting melanoma for almost a year and what a true warrior she was when Phil felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He fished it out and unlocked the screen, a text from Clint flashing up when he moved his thumb across the unlock slider:

_Received: 7:41 PM  
Still schmoozing with iron ass?_

Phil couldn't stop his lips from curling up into a faint smile at the nickname, the same thumb that had unlocked his phone typing out a quick response:

_Sent: 7:41 PM  
More listening than anything. Thor's kinda controlling the convo at the moment._

The response came within thirty seconds of his own, and Phil didn't bother locking his phone screen again between messages.

_Received: 7:42 PM  
I can hear his laughter from the vents two floors down_

_Sent: 7:42 PM  
Let me guess... the vent across from Steve's room?_

_Received: 7:43 PM  
Are you stalking me_

_Sent: 7:44 PM  
You're predictable. And someone left a blanket in there once, according to Stark. Kinda easy to pick out which spots are your favorite._

_Received: 7:47 PM  
You make it sound like you can prove it was me_

_Sent: 7:47 PM  
You left one in my office vent the week you had the flu._

_Received: 7:49 PM  
Still cant prove it was me_

_Sent: 7:50 PM  
Barton._

_Received: 7:51 PM  
Sir_

_Sent: 7:51 PM  
It was the purple one Natasha brought home for you from Chile._

There was a pause between his message and the response that was just long enough to genuinely put Phil on edge as he zoned out from the conversations around him and stared at his phone.

_Received: 7:55 PM  
Is that weird_

_Sent: 7:57 PM  
The fact that it was that blanket? I don't care. It's not mine. The fact that you were in my office vent? No. Not at all._

_Received: 7:58 PM  
Really_

_Sent: 7:59 PM  
Have I lied to you yet?_

_Received: 8:01 PM  
No_

_Received: 8:02 PM  
You should come down_

The second response came immediately after the first and caught Phil off-guard, a booming roar of a greeting from Thor as who turned out to be Bruce entered the room nearly making him jump out of his seat. He'd all but forgotten the others in the room, and now that he was looking around at them the rudeness of completely shutting them out made his gut squirm a little. He typed out a response quickly and laid his phone briefly on the arm of his chair before rising from it, reaching across the coffee table to offer Bruce a hand and give him a warm smile of greeting. When he sat down in his chair again he only barely caught the look Tony had fixed him with before he looked back to his phone, the knowing grin he knew was sitting firmly on Tony's face boring into him despite his best efforts to shake it off as he unlocked his phone screen again.

_Sent: 8:04 PM  
Why?_

_Received: 8:06 PM  
Because theyre boring enough for you to be texting me instead of talking to them_

"Boring" wasn't the word Phil would have used, but he did have a point.

_Received: 8:06 PM  
And i wanna show you something_

_Sent: 8:07 PM  
Alright, be there in a few._

When Phil rose from his chair a voice behind him made him jump again, head snapping around to look over his shoulder in time to catch Tony's salacious grin hovering at his left. "For the record, I'm not boring," he began, arms folding across the pale blue glow emanating from under his shirt. "And you shoulda told him to send a picture first. Would have been way more interesting."

Phil huffed in annoyance, but before he coule reach up to cuff the engineer across the side of the head a passing Natasha beat him to it. Her fingers made sharp contact with Tony's ear with a mutter of something along the lines of "inhospitable pig" in her native tongue (he couldn't be sure, but that was as close of a guess as Phil's menial understanding of Russian allowed) as she made her way behind the chair Phil had just abandoned, sauntering in a half-circle to throw herself into it and crook her knees over the arm.

Tony glowered down at her with a hand over his ear but the look was only quarter-powered, muted by the look Natasha fixed him with as Phil eased himself away from the group and toward the elevator doors just off the sitting room. He had just enough time to catch Tony's reminder that he hates when Natasha "babbles off in that crazy vodka language of hers" as he stepped onto the open elevator and tapped the button for Clint's floor.

The ride itself was quick and when Phil stepped off on the floor two levels below Tony's the sudden change in noise was almost startling: Tony's had been alight with lively conversation while this one was quiet, almost every light turned off except for one that emanated from a cracked door down the hall to his right. Each one of the team seemed to have their preferences for their living space: Steve's was softly lit and filled with vintage furniture he'd found himself soon after moving in; Bruce's always seemed to be unoccupied because of his long stretches in his lab; Natasha's was plush and almost decadent, decked out in solid black and red, and Thor's (when he was there) always smelled of mead and earth with a warmth that seemed to fill every space down to the floorboards.

But Clint's was... calm, for a lack of a better word. The only furniture he ever used was in his room and the sofa on the rare day he decided to turn on his Xbox, but everything else never really got used. He didn't even step foot in his kitchen much. The mini-fridge and coffee pot in his room seemed to suffice for whatever he needed, and Natasha was insistent on feeding him enough that cooking was sort of a moot point. Not that anyone was complaining. The one time Clint had tried to cook in his kitchen the toaster oven had gotten a rather sour attitude and nearly burned the whole floor to ashes (Clint's words).

The resulting lack of use for most of his floor was borderline creepy to people like Tony, but for someone that understood his reasoning it fit. Clint was used to smaller spaces. His last apartment had been scarcely more than drywall and resale shop furniture, so having something like this was unfamiliar and still a bit bizarre despite Clint being in the tower for the better part of half a year. He kept to a small space because having this much to work with was overwhelming, and in all truth he didn't need it. He was simple to the point of being frugal and Phil couldn't help but chuckle at his lack of understanding when it came to what he saw was "a waste of money and space".

When he stepped off the elevator the door down the hall widened open, a familiar jingling of tags echoing down to him as a slinking mass of rumpled brown fur appeared out of the shadow of the corridor. Phil's face broke into a smile as the dog trotted happily up to him, flopping into his haunches and peering up at him with one beady eye as Phil reached out to stratch him between the ears. "How's it going, buddy?" he asked quietly, running his thumb over one of the dog's ears before straightening up and heading down the hall toward Clint's bedroom.

The dog nosed his way through the door first, striding across the room to flop down next to the desk chair Clint was sitting in. His latop was open in front of him and when he looked over his shoulder his face curled with a faint smile, a subtle gesture that almost everyone else in his life never got to see. The gesture didn't go unnoticed and Phil returned it as he stepped in after the dog, nudging the door until the knob tapped the strike plate but didn't push it shut. Clint very rarely shut his door all the way, a small habit Phil had become accustomed to since their early days working together as two of the three components of Delta. Clint had all sorts of these little tics, and Phil had spent years cataloging them all as he noticed them. Some of them were fascinating, some of them were bizarre, but every time he acknowledged one (like the door) it never failed to earn him one of those faint little smiles so he never missed an opportunity.

"Stark made a dick joke, didn't he?" Clint asked over his shoulder before turning back to his laptop, reaching down to idly scratch at his dog's head when the mutt nosed against his thigh. If he was speaking that meant he had his hearing aids in, so a visual-aided approach like sidestepping into his range of vision wasn't necessary.

Phil chortled in response, sliding off his suit jacket and draping it across the table by the door. "Natasha cuffed him for it, and I'm pretty sure she called him a pig."

This time it was Clint's turn to laugh, a bark of a noise that rasped through his throat as he reached for the coffee pot he kept almost always full on his desk. "Good on her." There were two mugs set out by the coffee machine and Clint filled them both before putting the put back on the hot plate, offering one up to his handler who took it gratefully when he came within arm's reach.

When Phil eased himself into the seat that sat along the wall next to Clint's desk he got his first good view of what Clint was up to: his laptop screen had a list of what appeared to be saints on it, a small notepad covered in nearly unintelligible scraw that could easily be called chicken scratch if the joke wouldn't have gotten him punched for saying it. Phil's eyes lingered on the screen as he took a sip of his coffee, a brow arching when he shot Clint a quizzical glance. "Don't tell me those nurses converted you, of all people," he remarked.

Clint shook his head, eyes still locked on his screen. "Me? Hell no. I gave up on God the night you made me watch Toddlers & Tiaras."

He was never gonna let that go, was he? Phil didn't apologize just like every other time Clint brought that night up, eyes briefly rolling toward the ceiling. "So, what? You brought me up here to see a list of things you renounced because of a reality tv show?"

The pause that he got instead of a proper response immediately began to worry Phil, and his brows lowered until they were knitted together with a concerned frown. Clint looked away from his screen again to turn his eyes toward his lap, his frame remaining stock still for the space of a breath before he reached across the far side of his desk and dug around in a small box in the corner. When his hand came back a thin gold chain was tangled around his fingers, an oval pendant pinched between his thumb and the thickest knuckle of his index finger. His thumb obscured what was on the pendant but a second later he was dropping it in front of Phil, who caught it with his free hand and shifted the pendant until it came to rest in his upturned palm.

"Saint Francis de Sales."

Clint pushed his notepad across the desk toward Phil. And sure enough, when Phil took a better look at the oval pendant there was a picture of a balding man with a thick beard etched onto the surface. He turned it over to look at both sides, taking a long moment partially to examine the necklace and partially to give Clint a moment to continue when he wanted.

But the archer's eyes were on his laptop screen again and he seemed resolute in his silence, so Phil glanced at the notepad instead. He'd wrestled his way through enough of Clint's debrief forms to be able to decipher his atrocious handwriting, but it didn't take his well-versed and well-earned translation skills to make out the boldest words scrawled across the top of the page:

_Patron saint of the deaf_

Under that were scattered and sproadic notes, most of them at weird angles that suggested he'd written them down without looking at the page: bits and pieces about the saint's life, how he came to martyrdom, and a few things that looked like odd doodles that he couldn't quite figure out filled the page from top to bottom. He didn't have the time to look too close because the snapping of Clint's laptop closing shut drew his eyes back upward, a stormy look meeting his own when the two met gazes again.

"I didn't steal it." And if the undercurrent of paranoia in Clint's words wasn't what pulled at Phil's deeply buried heartstrings, it was the twinge of it that echoed through his eyes when he paused. "One of the older kids gave it to me when we were about to leave. He just ran up to me, slapped it into my hand, and took off with this weird look like someone was chasing him." When he paused again the stormy look waned by a hair, bowstring-calloused fingers shifting back through his hair as he let out a quiet, sheepish chuckle. "Kids are fuckin' weird."

That much he could agree with. Phil let his pensive frown flicker into something lighter, breaking their eye contact as he offered the pendant back to Clint with a knowing nod. "Yeah, can't disagree with you there." It wasn't that Phil outwardly disliked kids. He had a niece and two nephews that he loved to dote on for their birthdays and Christmas, and Uncle Phil's appearances were always a celebrated moment whenever he headed upstate to visit on his rare moments away from work. But the idea of having kids of his own, of settling down with some mild-mannered woman and possibly passing on his last name to a couple kids of his own, just didn't hold the appeal it should have. Maybe it was the fact that he could be called onto a mission that could vey easily turn into his last any second of any given day, but Phil had no desire to ever tie himself down like that... much to his poor sister's dismay.

A beat of silence paused between them as Clint took the necklace back, his forearm bracing against the edge of the desk with the chain held aloft tangled between his fingers. Phil didn't say anything to break the moment, merely watching from the corner of his eye as Clint's face shifted intermittently between quizzical, some kind of confused and maybe, just maybe a little awestruck. His facial features never moved, but his eyes projected every thought that flashed through his head in that one moment and Phil knew his asset well enough to discern almost every single one.

Clint's gaze snapped up to his without warning, dusty brows set low and scrunched together over the olive storm that momentarily left Phil without words. Clint Barton had never been and never would be an emotional man; part of why he and Natasha worked so well together was their unsaid agreement of "No emotional talk, ever". One was just as feelings-constipated as the other, but they both had their rare moments where that wall slipped just enough for Phil to get a peek over the edge at the mess on the other side. It was an honor and a gesture Phil didn't take lightly, so rather than push the obvious questions brewing in the archer's head Phil merely shook his head.

"He gave it to you because you meant something to him," he said quietly, addressing the only obvious question he could pull from the imploring gaze fixed on his own. "There aren't a lot of people like you in the world. You obviously made some kind of impact, even if it doesn't seem like it."

Clint froze and the storm deepened, his brow knitting harder for a few seconds as he pinned Phil with that same look he gave goons in alleys when he was squeezing them for intel. He was searching for any hint of bullshit, a reason to dismiss whatever they were saying as self-preserving blabber. Phil remained still even as his gut did a weird twisting thing behind his navel, his own face impassive and calm as he let Clint run through his little mental checklist in silence.

"I'm starving." Clint broke the silence abruptly and kicked away from his desk, standing from his chair to stretch his arms above his head with a quiet grunt as his back let out a couple muffled staccato pops. "If Thor cleared through my cereal again I'm gonna brain him."

Typical Clint. He obviously got the answer he was looking for and that was that. No explanation, no further discussion, his conclusion had been reached and that was the end of it. Phil mimiced the gesture and rose from his own chair with a solemn nod, tugging at the sleeves of his shirt to straighten them out in his jacket sleeve. "I'm pretty sure there's still a couple boxes of Lucky Charms in one of the cabinets," he offered back, quirking a passive shoulder. "And if not, there's still one at my apartment that you're welcome to. I'll never be able to eat it."

Clint paused as he moved to turn toward the door, and the unreadable mask of thought clamped itself over his features as he stared aimlessly at the space between them. He blinked, arching a brow when he flicked his gaze back up as if he couldn't quite figure out what to say back to something like that and shoot Phil in the head if that little shocked frown didn't break his heart every time he saw it. "You keep cereal in your apartment for me?" he asked back.

Phil nodded. "At least one box." He allowed himself a quiet chuckle as he took a step toward the door, nodding for Clint to head out before him. "Anything beyond that would just be weird, right?"

Clint took a second to consider the obvious work-around of the elephant that stood in the space between them before nodding, his features relaxing as much as they ever did as he turned toward the door again. "Yeah. Definitely weird."

They exited without another word, Phil trailing at the archer's flank back into the hall toward the elevator at the end of the hall. As well as Phil knew his asset, could pick apart his mannerisms and idiosynchrasies and write an entire dissertation on his method of pulling a bowstring, it never failed to floor him when he saw that momentary upturn of the corners of his lips. It happened maybe once every several months if that, but every time it did Phil knew it was a genuine gesture of something Clint never truly let himself accept.

Clint Barton was a mess. He was irritating and obnoxious and had enough emotional and mental baggage to fill an entire boxcar and then some; under all that snark and skill and infuriating resolve he was just a regular man. Everyone else got to see The Amazing Hawkeye: Sharpshooter Extraordinaire, but on the rare occasion when Phil got to see Clinton Francis Barton in that tiny, almost unnoticable twich of his lips, he knew who the real hero was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to leave feedback, commentary or new prompts for me on my new and improved Tumblr! http://eridell-rambles.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me some feedback or a new prompt on my Tumblr! http://eridell.tumblr.com


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